He just hadn’t been prepared for… he mentally flailed.
This.
But then, he hadn’t been prepared to take out a drunken fuckhead with two small cans of sliced olives, either, and he’d managed that.
Okay then. Day one doing regular people things, and he was going to be okay.
HE HADN’Tbrought In-N-Out for everybody when he’d stopped—frankly it hadn’t occurred to him, because he wasn’t used to thinking of other people. But hehadstopped by the cookie aisle when he’d been doing his forced casual tour of the outer perimeter of the store, and he vaguely remembered his mother saying something about neighbors should always have food with them. What the hell. He was planning to make something mostly healthy that evening, with olives and tomatoes and balsamicvinegar and French bread, but he was going to call today a complete loss on the diet scale and break out cookies for a snack.
And so he could talk to his newcommunityagain.
This time as he pulled up, he noticed the munched Subaru that Officer Carnegie had been dropping off. Ace, Sonny, and Jai were ranged around it, staring at it like hackers stared at code—like it held all the secrets of the universe.
“We got the diagnostics for it?” Ace asked.
“Yeah, Ace—you keep buying me toys, I keep using them.”
“We order the panels today,” Jai said. “They get here in a two days.”
“We should have the hammering on the frame done by then,” Ace said. “What color you want it?”
There was a silence then, and Eric, who had neared them on tiptoes, not wanting to disturb their druidic car ritual, realized Ace was talking tohim.
“What color’s easiest?” he asked. He knew that was sometimes a consideration; cars would arrive from the manufacturer as an army of silver fish or white swans.
“The parts and the rest of the vehicle will not match,” Jai said. “You may as well pick a color that you enjoy.”
“If you’re worried about being noticed,” Ace said, “lime green is less noticeable than primer spots. That’s a guarantee.”
“Red still means stop,” Jai said, and Sonny nodded his head.
“And green still means go,” he said. He glanced at Eric. “I’d say dark green, but….” He grimaced.
“Desert,” Ace said glumly, and they all nodded.
“What about the desert?” Eric asked, still alarmed by the scorpion thing.
“It’s fuckin’ hot!” Sonny said on a disbelieving laugh. “White cars are cooler, and so are silver. White or silver, with a pale interior, makes your car ten degrees cooler, which is ten degrees easier to cool down when it’s trying to cook you dead.”
Eric grunted. “And here I was, fantasizing about forest green.”
“How about pale metallic green?” Sonny asked. “Split the difference. Still hotter than white or silver, but it’s not gonna suck the heat outta the sky. That and you put some sun blocks in the windows when it’s parked—”
“Tint on the back windows period,” Jai intoned.
“And shades,” Ace added.
“And light gray interior,” Sonny said decisively. “It’s settled. We’ll do the ordering, and I can specialize the engine.”
Eric’s eyes widened. “Why…?”
Sonny gave him a disgusted look. “Now see, I woulda asked that myself, but then you almost wasted a guy with canned goods today, so I’m thinkin’ youknowwhy you might need to go super fast in a car that means go, amiright?”
They were all gazing at him with admiration now, and he gave them his most “don’t mind me, I’ll just disappear here” smile. “I may, sometimes, have reason to not be easily found,” he admitted.
“Yeah,” Sonny said. “Just ’cause you’re out of the business doesn’t mean some business won’t come your way.” He and Jai turned back to the car, this time to raise the crumpled hood with a screech, and Ace gestured with his chin for Eric to follow him to the shade in front of the auto bay and the cashier’s stand so they could stand a sec and talk.
“Them cookies for us?” he asked pleasantly as they got near the shelf for the cashier’s stand.
